Monday, January 19, 2015

Obama "dramatically" increases allowable levels of radiation in drinking water

As radioactive pollution continues to accumulate throughout the
environment as a result of nuclear incidents like Fukushima, the U.S.
government's response is not to try to mitigate this threat to public
health but rather to increase the official maximum exposure levels and
basically redefine how much radiation is considered safe.

The
Obama Administration recently did this with regard to radiation in
drinking water, dramatically increasing allowable levels in response to
"radiological incidents" that make it impossible to keep radiation
levels below the previously established thresholds. So, the new approach
is to continually raise these thresholds so that water can be
considered safe.

It isn't, of course, but that's the illusion
that the American plutocracy would have us all accept as reality -- or
what the nuclear industry describes as the "new normal," according to
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The goal is to
maintain the ruse for as long as possible, or until so many people are
ill and dying of cancer that nothing can be done to stop this runaway
train.

According to a press release from PEER, the White House's
decision to allow the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to alter its
official radiation guides, known as Protective Action Guides (PAGs),
make radiation cleanup mandates more lax than they have ever been in the
history of the agency's existence.

"In soil, the PAGs allow
long-term public exposure to radiation in amounts as high as 2,000
millirems," explains the press release. "This would, in effect, increase
a longstanding 1 in 10,000 person cancer rate to a rate of 1 in 23
persons exposed over a 30-year period."

Allowable levels of radiation in drinking water are basically undefined at this point

For drinking water, the requirements are even more obscured. According
to the same report, the EPA's new standard is undefined in this regard
as the agency "continues to seek input." But the gist of it allows for
indeterminable "flexibility" in discarding the previously established
limits for drinking water and basically allowing whatever radiation is present in water to be considered "safe."

There's
obviously nothing scientific about this "new normal" policy, but most
of the "sheeple" probably won't even take a second look at it. PEER
Executive Director Jeff Ruch said it right when he told some in the
media that the Obama Sdministration's new guidelines are something that "only Dr. Strangelove could embrace."

"If
this typifies the environmental leadership we can expect from Ms.
McCarthy," he stated, referring to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy,
"then [the] EPA is in for a long, dirty slog. No compelling
justification is offered for increasing the cancer deaths of Americans
innocently exposed to corporate miscalculations several hundred-fold."

Interestingly,
the guidelines in the new PAGs for how to handle "radiological
emergencies," which include evacuations, shelter-in-place orders, food
restrictions and other actions, seem to fit the bill for what the world
currently faces with Fukushima. Radiation releases from the shuttered
plant are still so high that a Japanese government official recently
reported that there is no other option but to continue dumping
contaminated releases into the ocean.

This tainted ocean water
will obviously continue circulating around the world, polluting ocean
life, soils, and other ecosystems encountered by humans. And this will
result in even higher levels of radiation for which the EPA will have to cover up the truth and pretend as though everything is just fine.

"We
have to dispose of the water," stated Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of the
Nuclear Regulation Authority in Japan, in a public comment after
expressing that he was "overwhelmed" by the number of tanks holding
radioactive water.

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